President Bush offered encouragement to war-weary Iraqis on Monday but acknowledged they have paid a heavy price — 30,000 dead — as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath. As Iraqis began voting in parliamentary elections, Bush said that no country has formed a democracy without "challenges, setbacks and false starts." "There's still a lot of difficult work to be done in Iraq," the president said, "but thanks to the courage of the Iraqi people, the year 2005 will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East and the history of freedom."
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